Style Sheet – Her

Having looked back at the French New Wave in a previous Style Sheet we’re taking our cinematic style inspiration from the future this time around with a look at Spike Jonze’s recent film ‘Her’. High waisted trousers, textured materials and simple shirts with buttoned up collars are key in producing the unique pared back visual style of the movie. Instead of hovercraft and shiny skintight suits, ‘Her’s’ vision of the future has a minimalist, retro and entirely plausible tone alluding to the cyclical nature of fashion. The retro influence also extends beyond the sartorial elements with mid-century furniture, wood encased electronics and sleek timeless design featuring heavily throughout the film in exceptionally cool apartments. Spike Jonze is just one of those directors that always seems to deliver aesthetically and if you’re not quite ready to don the high waisted trousers just yet, we’re positive you’ll find something from our Style Sheet to inspire you to embrace a bit of futurist-retro style for your wardrobe.

Although the styling and aesthetic of the film immediately hits you, smaller aspects such as the complete absence of denim are not so readily apparent. Little touches like this add to the overall minimal tone of the movie and offers an interesting vision of a world not awash with jeans and printed tee shirts. As the costumer designer for Her Casey Storm explains:

“When we were making rules for this world we created, we decided that it would be better to take things away rather than add them. When you add things that aren’t of this era, you wind up noticing them and it becomes really distracting, so our rules were more like, there won’t be any denim in this film, there won’t be any baseball hats, there won’t be any ties or belts. Even lapels and collars will almost disappear. I think the absence of those things creates a unique world, but you can’t quite put your finger on why that is.”

As someone who suffers from a slightly denim heavy wardrobe myself the use of texture, martial and colour in the trouser department is particularly inspiring. The outfit in the photo above for example, with the white shirt tucked into textured beige trousers, would be a perfect summer choice for a day at the office and the use of colour in Joaquin Phoenix’s characters ‘beach outfit’ below looks fantastic and shows the versatility of trousers vs jeans to great effect.